One Year Update

OK, it's been another long while, and a lot has happened. I left off in September, with mediocre vision due to residual astigmatism. On December 6th, I had PRK on my dominant right eye to take care of that astigmatism. PRK does essentially the same thing as LASIK, which is reshape the cornea, but with a different way of getting those pesky epithelial cells (the cells on the cornea surface) out of the way. LASIK creates a flap with a blade (microkeratome) or a laser. In PRK, the epithelial layer is removed with a chemical. Because this layer is entirely removed, and not just flipped out of the way, PRK requires a much longer healing time. The cells regrow and cover the hole in about three days, but the final integrity of the layer is not completely healed for about six months, causing a very gradual improvement in vision quality. During this time, there is also a tendency for vision to fluctuate temporarily, for a few hours at a time.

So for the first three days after the surgery, I had a bandage (clear) contact lens in my eye to cover the epithelial hole. This stage can be quite painful. Fortunately for me, it was not painful at all, though the Percocet they gave me could have helped with that. I used it for the first day, and was even able to watch a football game that night, albeit while wearing sunglasses. At this point my vision was very clear because there was no epithelial layer present. The main discomfort during those three days was due to general inflammation and the presence of the bandage contact lens. However, I had an anti-inflammatory drop that really helped. By Monday, the fourth day post-op, I returned to the surgeon's office to have the lens removed. As the epithelial layer sealed over, I lost some clarity of vision, and was seeing at about 20/50 out of my right eye. But everything was healthy, and I was told to continue with a steroid drop until told otherwise.

My vision steadily improved over the next few weeks as the epithelial layer continued to heal. I believe that I got to 20/20 after about two months (I forget the date at this point). I am now at six months past the PRK surgery, and things have settled pretty well. I occasionally had blurry moments, but they steadily decreased. At four months after the PRK surgery, my doctor declared the process complete and I was finally able to stop the steroid drops, which we had tapered down over time.

Now comes the ultimate question: am I happy? In general, yes, I am. I still have significant halo issues, but now that it's summer it's light out later so it's not as much of a problem. I've been to mutliple baseball games, and I am not seeing any worse than I did in the past. I think what I'm worried about now is fluctuation of my vision over time. I can't just change contact lens prescriptions any more if my eyes change. But regardless, it won't change enough that I will have to wear glasses to do all the outdoor stuff that eyewear would inhibit (beaches, water sports, etc, not that I do much of those anyway). I do feel that my vision has been a litle worse over the last few days, which worries me a bit. But then I second-guess myself and think everything's the same. I guess I just need to stop worrying about it and see how things go. If anything changes, I'll be back and update the blog.

Thanks for reading, and I hope my experience has been slightly helpful to one or two of you considering Visian!